DIFI GIVES ME SECOND THOUGHTS ON COMEY

DiFi in despair

Perhaps the only thing most Democrats and Republicans agree on is FBI Director James Comey is a putz.

I’m not willing to go there – yet.

Look at the expression on the face of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Cal) in this CNN interview last Wednesday (5/3). Have you ever seen such sadness, despondency, dejection, despair?

DiFi is ranking Dem on the Senate Judiciary and Intelligence Committees. On Tuesday (5/2), DiFi was at the CIA for a briefing on Russian meddling in the election. The CNN interview took place shortly after Comey’s contentious public Judiciary Committee hearing I wrote about last week.

But immediately after that public hearing, Comey also gave her and Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) a closed-door classified brief on Russian meddling, Feinstein said.

Here’s the whole interview. Note how surprised and disappointed Wolf Blitzer is when DiFi tells him she’s seen no evidence of “collusion” between Trump associates and Russkies; how quickly Wolf ends the interview after getting an answer that doesn’t fit his narrative.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiLyhqfdpOg

I doubt Feinstein would have looked so forlorn if all she’d been told is there is no substance to the innuendo against Trump. DiFi has known that for months.

Some experts think the phony Steele dossier is Russian disinformation. Was DiFi told the FBI is investigating Fusion GPS and other Dems involved in financing and shopping it?

That could be why Comey refused to answer questions about Fusion GPS during last week’s hearing.

If DiFi had just learned an anvil, a safe, a locomotive was about to drop on Dems, that could explain why she looked as if someone shot her dog.

Comey was put in an impossible position last July. He knew Hillary committed multiple felonies (more precisely, the same felony multiple times). And he knew Obama Justice would never indict her.

The most honorable thing for Comey to do, I thought at the time, would be to resign in protest, hold a news conference to explain why.

But not many of us will sacrifice our careers for the public good. I can’t condemn Comey overmuch for not falling on that grenade himself.

Comey did what he thought was the next best thing. He spelled out Hillary’s crimes – and then gave a transparently phony reason for not prosecuting her.

People not named Clinton go to jail if they do once what Hillary did hundreds of times. Republicans gave Comey understandable Hell for letting her walk. But that was never his call.

If Attorney General Loretta Lynch weren’t a corrupt political hack, would the FBI director have made a criminal referral? We don’t know. But we also wouldn’t know the extent of Hillary’s crimes if Comey hadn’t spelled them out.

Comey went from hero to zero among Dems when – after thousands more of Hillary’s emails were found on the (insecure) laptop of Anthony Weiner — he told Congress he was reopening the investigation.

(Hillary aide Huma Abedin customarily forwarded emails – many of them classified – to her husband so he could print them out for her.)

Announcing the renewed investigation was unusual – would have been improper in most circumstances. But after Comey had so publicly slammed the door on the Hillary investigation in July, I don’t think he had a choice.

If Comey hadn’t reported the find — discovered during an unrelated investigation into Weiner’s sexting – word of it would have leaked, people would wonder why the FBI was doing nothing about it.

Comey defended himself ably at last week’s hearing. Democrats on the Judiciary Committee backpedalled. Huma probably should have been indicted, one Dem grumpily acknowledged after it.

As Karl Rove and many others have pointed out, it wasn’t Comey, or the Russians, who kept Hillary from campaigning in Wisconsin.

The FBI was misused for political purposes. But almost certainly that was due to pressure from the Obama administration. Yielding to pressure does Comey no honor. But there’s a difference between being a spineless toady, and being corrupt.

If a senior FBI official is corrupt, it’s more likely to be Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who didn’t recuse himself from the Hillary email investigation despite his wife’s close ties to the Clintons.

If Comey resigned – or was fired because he refused to carry out improper orders – McCabe would be boss. It’s possible Comey thought he could protect the FBI better by yielding to pressure than by letting a fox take charge of the henhouse.

Big stuff is happening to which few people are paying attention.

On April 15, cops in Berkeley stood idly by and watched as Antifa thugs assaulted Trump supporters.

On May 1, cops in Berkeley, Portland, Madison, and New York City unmasked Antifa thugs, photographed them, arrested some.

Something caused a sea change in the attitude and behavior of cops in blue cities.

In videos of the Berkeley riot April 15, Thomas Wictor noticed about half a dozen fit men in their 30s and 40s, evidently familiar with martial arts, who broke up assaults, collected DNA evidence on the most egregious perps.

If those guys were feds, they almost certainly were FBI.

Did someone tell cops in blue cities to do their jobs; the feds will protect them from retaliation by local leftie pols? Could that someone be Comey? Are there RICO indictments in the offing?

If I were Antifa, I’d be very, very afraid.

Comey has splainin’ to do about the Steele dossier, and why he’s stonewalled requests for information from Congressional oversight committees.

If this Fox News story is true, he is a putz, and ought to go. But before I join the mobs howling for Comey’s head, I want to find out if there’s more to the story.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret, and was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force during the Reagan Administration.  Until his retirement in January 2017, he was the national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.